Category Archives: Christian Zionism

What is Christian Zionism?

Why such a close relationship between Israel and the United States of America? What is the fascination with Israel among Evangelical Christians in America?  There is a simple explanation. At least one in four American Christians surveyed recently by Christianity Today magazine said that they believe it is their biblical responsibility to support the nation of Israel. This view is known as Christian Zionism.

At its simplest, Christian Zionism is Christian support for Zionism. The driving principle of Christian Zionism is the belief in the abiding relevance of the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 “I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and all the peoples on the earth will be blessed through you”. 

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Sixty Academics Endorse Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon?

“I wanted to congratulate you on your book … Like yourself in one regard, I have a long history of what I call “prediction addiction” — and its obvious flaws and failures. Your book seems to be a careful and much needed analysis of the destructive wake left by pre-millennial dispensationalism. Thank you! My particular version of dispensationalism was informed by a potent and lethal mixture of sabbatarianism and British Israelism as championed by Herbert W. Armstrong… God rescued me (and many others, thank God) from these heretical notions… What Dr. Sizer addresses is absolutely critical for Christians in North America to understand. Greg AlbrechtPresident of Plain Truth Ministries, and Editor-in-Chief, The Plain Truth magazine (author of Revelation Revolution & Bad News Religion).  

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The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism

“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

Christian Zionism is a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel. The Christian Zionist programme provides a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism. In its extreme form, it places an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ’s love and justice today.

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Christian Zionism: Seven Biblical Answers

It is not an understatement to say that what is at stake is our understanding of the gospel, the centrality of the cross, the role of the church, and the nature of our missionary mandate, not least, to the beloved Jewish people. If we don’t see Jesus at the heart of the Hebrew scriptures, and the continuity between his Old Testament and New Testament saints in the one inclusive Church, we’re not reading them correctly. The key question is this “Was the coming of Jesus and the birth of the Church the fulfilment or the postponement of the promises God made to Abraham?” Christian Zionists see the promises of identity, land and destiny as part of an ongoing covenant God has with the Jewish people. In the following resources I answer this question and show that Christian Zionism is a recent manifestation of a heresy refuted by the Old and New Testaments.

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Christian Zionism Preceded Jewish Zionism: WRMEA

Delinda Hanley has written an article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs about a presentation I gave at the Jerusalem Fund in Washington DC in November last year.

Read her article here “Rev. Sizer Reveals Christian Zionism Preceded Jewish Zionism

Watch the Jerusalem Fund video of the presentation here

Can Religion and Politics be Separated in the Middle East Today?

A presentation by Colin Chapman
Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide Seminar
9 October, 2018

 Introduction

Let me begin with a one-sentence answer: it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible to separate religion and politics in the Middle East today; and the future is bleak unless we can find ways of separating religion and politics and allowing religion to support an international order that is based on the rule of law.

This presentation is very much a ‘big picture’ exercise, an attempt to put some of the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle together. As a Christian who is interested in the role of religion and the interaction of religion with politics, I’m trying to make sense of the history that is being played out before us in the Middle East at the present time.

I probably need to explain my credentials. I’m not a historian or a political scientist. I happen to have worked with a mission agency, the Church Mission Society (CMS), in the Middle East for 18 years and have been engaged in theological education of different kinds both there and in the UK, specialising in recent years in Islamic studies. Continue reading

Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon?

A presentation given at the Palestine Center in association with the Jerusalem Fund, in Washington DC, last week on the historical roots, theological basis and political agenda of Christian Zionism. The presentation was drawn from the following three summaries of my PhD thesis on Christian Zionism.

Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon?

Christian Zionism Master History (part 1)
Christian Zionism Master Theology (part 2)
Christian Zionism Master Politics (part 3)

Read more here

 

Five Strategies


Five Strategies used by the Israel Lobby to silence critics. Recorded for Press TV.

1. Infiltration
Get alongside your opponent and try and turn them, buy them, befriend them, bring them on-side. If that doesn’t work, move to level 2.

2. Intimidation
Don’t like what they are saying or writing? Then bombard them with emails, letters and phone calls. Put them on the defensive. Intimidate them with accusations of anti-semitism, holocaust denial, etc. If that doesn’t work, move to level 3. Continue reading

What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?

surprised-by-joy_cs-lewis_620“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with the tremendous difference that it really happened.”  — C. S. Lewis

‘What are we to make of Jesus Christ?’ This is a question, which has, in a sense, a frantically comic side. For the real question is not what are we to make of Christ, but what is He to make of us? The picture of a fly sitting deciding what it is going to make of an elephant has comic elements about it. But perhaps the questioner meant what are we to make of Him in the sense of ‘How are we to solve the historical problem set us by the recorded sayings and acts of this Man?’ This problem is to reconcile two things. On the one hand you have got the almost generally admitted depth and sanity of His moral teaching, which is not very seriously questioned, even by those who are opposed to Christianity. In fact, I find when I am arguing with very anti-God people that they rather make a point of saying, ‘I am entirely in favour of the moral teaching of Christianity’ — and there seems to be a general agreement that in the teaching of this Man and of His immediate followers, moral truth is exhibited at its purest and best. It is not sloppy idealism; it is full of wisdom and shrewdness. The whole thing is realistic, fresh to the highest degree, the product of a sane mind. That is one phenomenon.

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